Tuesday, 17 December 2013

Indie Game Review - The Shivah: Kosher Edition by Wadjet Eye Games

It was 2006 when Dave Gilbert
tried the "now-or-never" approach to commercial game development and
first released The Shivah, an adventure game originally developed in one month
for the monthly Adventure Game Studio (MAGS) competition of that same year. Wadjet Eye Games exists as we know it today
largely thanks to The Shivah.

Even today, The Shivah is one of the few games to
feature a rabbi as a main character, in this case rabbi Russell Stone.

Deeply in debt and with his
synagogue overwhelmed by bills, Rabbi Stone is visited by the police: a former
member of his congregation, which he didn't talk to in the last eight years,
died three days earlier and left him a huge amount of money in his will. How
can that possibly be? Moreover, why are the police involved? Rabbi Stone seems
sceptical and the circumstances are not helping. This is a tale of crime and mystery,
that most of the time will make us choose between "what a rabbi should
do" and "what a man should do". Sometimes you may need to
out-rabbi someone in a fight, sometimes you may need to punch him in the right
spot.

I'm not new to "Jewish
humour". I was introduced to it by the works of Moni Ovadia, a Jewish
Italian-Bulgarian actor who in 1998 collected dozens of jokes about Jewish
people and religion, actually spreading a lot of knowledge about the roots of
their culture. So, finding that the game was filled with the same kind of jokes
was really engaging. These are displayed in a typical Dave Gilbert style: when
engaged in a conversation, you may choose to answer questions in a
"Rabbinical way", meaning that you will answer with another question;
when logging into your email account, you may browse through different Jewish
related jokes; you always carry a little helpful Yiddish dictionary, and so on.

So, The Shivah: Kosher Edition is actually a remake of Dave Gilbert’s
first ever commercial game. It's still quite short (adventure game veterans may
finish this up in about a couple of hours) and sometimes you may feel in a bit
of a "rush", but it’s still nothing short of great, especially if you
bear in mind that it was a debut game (albeit a remade debut game). Polished thanks to the programming skills of
Janet Gilbert and the painting capabilities of Ben Chandler (Ben304) to be
ready for iOS, the game is also fully voice acted, which sometimes is not
perfect (also due, maybe, to some minor recording issues) but indeed excels, in
my humble opinion, when Joe Rodriguez (also the voice of the Director in Gemini
Rue) performs as Rabbi Zelig.

One of the things I loved most
is that every question I had about the development (for instance about the
length of some scenes or the voice acting direction) was covered by the
DVD-style commentary included in the game ("Kibbitz mode"). Dave and
Janet are both funny and very precise in explaining what they would and would
not include in the game, if they were going to make it today, handing out also
some design tips here and there, which is always a plus.

What else is there to say? Go
buy The Shivah: Kosher Edition and
give it a try! You can find more information about the game, download the demo or buy the game on the Wadjet Eye Games website. (At time of posting the price is $4.99.)